Thoughts on Election 2020 A Year In Advance
I write this on November 3, 2019, one year to the day until the 2020 Presidential election. With two dozen Presidential contenders on the Democratic side and an incumbent Republican polling several points underwater, you'd think prospects for Democrats regaining the White House would be pretty good. Instead, the chatter behind the scenes is that the Democratic establishment is shopping around for another candidate as the candidates in the top tier all look deeply problematic for a variety of reasons. I share many of their concerns, and in the ensuing paragraphs will profile the candidates in the field who I suspect would be favored to beat Donald Trump, those who I don't believe would beat him, and those whose electability I'm still undecided about. After that I'll explain why I think Democratic messaging puts at risk the semblance of a winning coalition.
Candidates I Think Would Beat Trump:
Amy Klobuchar
Michael Bennet
Tim Ryan (recently dropped out)
John Delaney
Steve Bullock
Candidates I Don't Think Would Beat Trump:
Elizabeth Warren
Bernie Sanders
Kamala Harris
Beto O'Rourke (recently dropped out)
Andrew Yang
Julian Castro
Tulsi Gabbard
Marianne Williamson
Candidates Whose Electability I'm Undecided About:
Joe Biden
Pete Buttigieg
Cory Booker
Tom Steyer
Starting with the first group, Amy Klobuchar is probably the most electable candidate in the field, having successfully governed from the center-left while winning significant crossover support from Republicans in three successive Senate runs in Minnesota. Unfortunately, Klobuchar's career-long image management suffered a serious blow when it was revealed without refute that she was a nasty boss with an explosive temper. This revelation killed her momentum at the start of the race and would continue to be a liability if she was the nominee, but I still think that she'd be the best contrast against Trump with the best potential to pick up substantial crossover support from center-right independents and disaffected Republicans.
The other four candidates I think would all beat Trump are "boring white guys" from Middle America who wouldn't "inspire" activists on the left but would be considered the most reasonable and temperamentally sound alternatives to the incumbent. If the election is a referendum on a guy deemed to be unfit for office by most voters, then the base who we're told viscerally despises him should be sufficiently motivated to come out for whoever the Democrats put up. At that point, it's just about persuading those in the center....and guys like Bennet and Bullock would be well-positioned to do that.
As for the candidates who I don't think could beat him, I posted a rant about Elizabeth Warren a couple of weeks ago that I stand by. She boxed herself in so that nobody could get to her left in the primary but is now stuck with a policy agenda that will be a nonstarter with the voters the Democrats need most....upscale professionals. Bernie Sanders' time was 2016, and his secret sauce was convincing working-class whites in the Midwest that his populist message was directed toward them...but Trump has since realigned those voters and simultaneously elevated the immigration issue which is kryptonite for the Democrats with working-class whites. Couple that with Bernie's backing from the likes of Alexandria Ocazio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar and the working-class whites who used to think Bernie was speaking to them will no longer think he is.
Kamala Harris and Beto O'Rourke have both seemed to be in a race to the bottom to prove which of the two heavily hyped candidates was the emptier suit. Julian Castro has been in a contest with O'Rourke to see who can steer the conversation on specific issues (guns, immigration) to the most damaging place for the general election. Andrew Yang is a one-issue novelty candidate who speaks well and puts useful policy points on the board, but in no way would pass the Commander in Chief test. Tulsi Gabbard seems like the dream candidate on paper but has too many quirky and questionable associations and policy points to win a Democratic nomination.
Then there's the candidates who are still question marks. At the top of the list is erstwhile frontrunner Joe Biden, whose age and halting debate performances have put in question his cognitive capacity for the job while his son's professional history of cashing in on his father's stature as Vice President is both unsettling and narratively problematic for a campaign against Trump. Couple that with Biden's gaffe-prone history in national politics and his nomination would be a huge roll of the dice. The only reason he hasn't faded as quickly as 2016 GOP frontrunner Jeb Bush is because the rest of the Democrats' top tier seems unelectably radical to Democratic moderates and the party establishment.
At least for now, Pete Buttigieg is my guy. I'd have never imagined six months ago I'd be saying that about the 37-year-old Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, in a field of more than 20 candidates, but his intellect and communication skills hit the sweet spot for the kind of messaging that I think the Democrats need to win independents and some working-class whites. So why do I only put him in the "maybe" category for electability? His scant professional resume doesn't pass the Commander in Chief test. He can offset this to a limited degree because he's a veteran and because he'd be running against Donald Trump, but one gaffe on the foreign policy front during the campaign would likely instantly disqualify him. Furthermore, there's a substantial segment of the African American community that is very homophobic. Blacks are the core of the Democratic Party base, and if because of his sexuality Buttigieg can't consolidate their support to at least 90-10 levels, he can't win.
Cory Booker is the kind of candidate who might be able to scratch together a winning coalition in a best-case scenario environment, but he's always seemed pretty oily and has said and done some things during this nomination fight that will be extremely problematic in the general election. I don't think there's a constituency for Tom Steyer to get the nomination, but barring indefensible revelations from his business career, an anti-Trump electorate might hold their nose and vote for him.
It's hard to categorize anybody in this field as a "moderate" of the Bill Clinton ilk as the overton window of the Democratic Party has shifted significantly left, but heading into 2020 I think the Democrats have to come to terms with the fact that the moderates in the race represent their best chance of toppling Trump compared to the leftists and populists. Why? Because the Democrats have to reconcile that the electoral playing field will be determined with the coalition they have rather than the coalition they may wish they had. On no issue is this more explicit than on health care....
Single-payer health care can only happen with a decisive national mandate, and I suspect such a mandate could only come from a broad coalition of the downscale, FDR-style, who is fed up with private insurance and won't take it anymore. But that coalition of the downscale will not happen in 2020....because the downscale will be divided along racial lines. As I said earlier, Trump has consolidated support among the white working-class and it's very unlikely they'll break with him in a decisive way. If that proves true, then the Democrats' path to 270 electoral votes requires them to significantly outperform the historical average among upscale professionals. There were some indications based on trendlines in 2016 and 2018 that this can be done, but it changes the DNA of the Democratic Party in a way that will block the path to progressive governance, on health care in particular. Upscale professionals are the demographic most likely to like their private health insurance plan, and will thus be the most sensitive to the prospect of disruption. This poses a collision between the interests of a Democratic nominee who will be proposing considerable structural change to the health care status quo with a voting bloc they must have if they're gonna win who wants to see the least structural change to their health care, or the status quo generally. If the Democrats' only credible path to victory requires a corporate-friendly bloc of swing voters, then they have to appreciate that they will have to run on a corporate-friendly policy agenda.
If I'm right about that, what are the chances of Democrats getting back some of those working-class whites who helped to twice elect Obama and seemed amenable to Bernie Sanders' 2016 message? Extremely doubtful, at least so long as Democrats continue to double-down on the messaging that drives working-class whites absolutely nuts. They won't win them back by talking about "decriminalized borders" or immigrants being "the best of us". They won't win them back by talking about health care guarantees for illegal immigrants. They won't win them back by talking about slavery reparations. They won't win them back by talking about white privilege. They won't win them back by talking about toxic masculinity. They won't win them back by talking about taking their AR-15s. They won't win them back by agreeing with the Twitter mob that people need to be "canceled" for the Halloween costume they wore in 1984 that hasn't aged well. And even though this one is less defensible in terms of global interest, they're also not likely to win them back talking about climate change, because combating climate change will require additional sacrifice disproportionately foisted onto a demographic who believes they've sacrificed enough due to automation, foreign competition, and declining wages....and is more interested in political leaders talking about security rather than more sacrifice. And Donald Trump's already got that messaging covered.
The fundamentals I'm looking at based on combination of gut and historical precedent is that almost all of Trump's 2016 voters will support him again. Those who he successfully persuaded to support him last time will likely be sold on his messaging again, even if grudgingly, since Trump is a maestro at identifying his opponents' biggest weakness and disqualifying them based on it. So let's say 98% of his 2016 voters stay with him next year. That won't be enough alone for him to win again given how narrow his 2016 victory was, but I suspect he'll make up the difference by flipping a small percentage of additional working-class white "legacy Democrats" who held on for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but have since either taken a liking to Trump's style or believe the Democrats have left them with their social justice platform.
Beyond that, the biggest wild card in 2020 is the 2016 Gary Johnson voters. They made up a significant 3.8% of the electorate in 2016, and they are a grab bag of moderate Democrats, NeverTrump Republicans, and genuine independents whose loyalties going into next year's election are anybody's guess. There might even be another third-party candidate next year who gets a good chunk of Johnson's voters, a scenario I see as especially viable if Elizabeth Warren gets the Democratic nomination. Absent another third-party candidate who gets most of Johnson's voters, I wager that whichever of the two major-party candidates gets the lion's share of Johnson's support ends up winning. And on election night I suspect this will be visible not in the places where the election pundits tell us to be looking for (the suburbs of Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee, among others), but in the 2,626 American counties spread across the nation that voted for Donald Trump in 2016. If Trump is doing 2% better than in 2016, in the aggregate, in that giant swath of red-tinted Middle American territory, that probably means he's getting most of those Gary Johnson voters...and that probably means he'll be re-elected.
Looking at these sets of options, it's extremely dispiriting to consider the ramifications next year and beyond. Can Democrats stitch together the coalition necessary to oust Trump and avoid a two-generations-long consolidation of right-wing power through the judiciary that will come if he's re-elected? Right now, I'm betting 60-40 odds against. They might be able to do it if they catch a lot of breaks and can navigate the tight-rope walk necessary to bridge their muscularly progressive policy positions with the decidedly non-progressive demographic of voters most likely to decide the election. But let's say they do win in 2020 courtesy of upscale professionals who vote Democrat primarily out of their personal disgust with Trump. They will lose these voters as soon as it's time to govern.
Win or lose, the Democratic coalition of 2020 strikes me as historically closest to the Democratic coalition of 1976, an unsustainable mix and match of competing interests momentarily united in a referendum against Richard Nixon. Jimmy Carter was able to eke out the narrowest Electoral College victory that year by dragging Deep South segregationists onto the Democratic Party dance floor one last time, but that coalition didn’t fare so hot for the Dems for the next 16 years. Yet right now, the prospect of a win in 2020--that prevents conservative Trump-appointed judges from dismantling every progressive achievement going back to Teddy Roosevelt--before a comprehensive Democratic coalition collapse seems like the best-case scenario for them.
Candidates I Think Would Beat Trump:
Amy Klobuchar
Michael Bennet
Tim Ryan (recently dropped out)
John Delaney
Steve Bullock
Candidates I Don't Think Would Beat Trump:
Elizabeth Warren
Bernie Sanders
Kamala Harris
Beto O'Rourke (recently dropped out)
Andrew Yang
Julian Castro
Tulsi Gabbard
Marianne Williamson
Candidates Whose Electability I'm Undecided About:
Joe Biden
Pete Buttigieg
Cory Booker
Tom Steyer
Starting with the first group, Amy Klobuchar is probably the most electable candidate in the field, having successfully governed from the center-left while winning significant crossover support from Republicans in three successive Senate runs in Minnesota. Unfortunately, Klobuchar's career-long image management suffered a serious blow when it was revealed without refute that she was a nasty boss with an explosive temper. This revelation killed her momentum at the start of the race and would continue to be a liability if she was the nominee, but I still think that she'd be the best contrast against Trump with the best potential to pick up substantial crossover support from center-right independents and disaffected Republicans.
The other four candidates I think would all beat Trump are "boring white guys" from Middle America who wouldn't "inspire" activists on the left but would be considered the most reasonable and temperamentally sound alternatives to the incumbent. If the election is a referendum on a guy deemed to be unfit for office by most voters, then the base who we're told viscerally despises him should be sufficiently motivated to come out for whoever the Democrats put up. At that point, it's just about persuading those in the center....and guys like Bennet and Bullock would be well-positioned to do that.
As for the candidates who I don't think could beat him, I posted a rant about Elizabeth Warren a couple of weeks ago that I stand by. She boxed herself in so that nobody could get to her left in the primary but is now stuck with a policy agenda that will be a nonstarter with the voters the Democrats need most....upscale professionals. Bernie Sanders' time was 2016, and his secret sauce was convincing working-class whites in the Midwest that his populist message was directed toward them...but Trump has since realigned those voters and simultaneously elevated the immigration issue which is kryptonite for the Democrats with working-class whites. Couple that with Bernie's backing from the likes of Alexandria Ocazio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar and the working-class whites who used to think Bernie was speaking to them will no longer think he is.
Kamala Harris and Beto O'Rourke have both seemed to be in a race to the bottom to prove which of the two heavily hyped candidates was the emptier suit. Julian Castro has been in a contest with O'Rourke to see who can steer the conversation on specific issues (guns, immigration) to the most damaging place for the general election. Andrew Yang is a one-issue novelty candidate who speaks well and puts useful policy points on the board, but in no way would pass the Commander in Chief test. Tulsi Gabbard seems like the dream candidate on paper but has too many quirky and questionable associations and policy points to win a Democratic nomination.
Then there's the candidates who are still question marks. At the top of the list is erstwhile frontrunner Joe Biden, whose age and halting debate performances have put in question his cognitive capacity for the job while his son's professional history of cashing in on his father's stature as Vice President is both unsettling and narratively problematic for a campaign against Trump. Couple that with Biden's gaffe-prone history in national politics and his nomination would be a huge roll of the dice. The only reason he hasn't faded as quickly as 2016 GOP frontrunner Jeb Bush is because the rest of the Democrats' top tier seems unelectably radical to Democratic moderates and the party establishment.
At least for now, Pete Buttigieg is my guy. I'd have never imagined six months ago I'd be saying that about the 37-year-old Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, in a field of more than 20 candidates, but his intellect and communication skills hit the sweet spot for the kind of messaging that I think the Democrats need to win independents and some working-class whites. So why do I only put him in the "maybe" category for electability? His scant professional resume doesn't pass the Commander in Chief test. He can offset this to a limited degree because he's a veteran and because he'd be running against Donald Trump, but one gaffe on the foreign policy front during the campaign would likely instantly disqualify him. Furthermore, there's a substantial segment of the African American community that is very homophobic. Blacks are the core of the Democratic Party base, and if because of his sexuality Buttigieg can't consolidate their support to at least 90-10 levels, he can't win.
Cory Booker is the kind of candidate who might be able to scratch together a winning coalition in a best-case scenario environment, but he's always seemed pretty oily and has said and done some things during this nomination fight that will be extremely problematic in the general election. I don't think there's a constituency for Tom Steyer to get the nomination, but barring indefensible revelations from his business career, an anti-Trump electorate might hold their nose and vote for him.
It's hard to categorize anybody in this field as a "moderate" of the Bill Clinton ilk as the overton window of the Democratic Party has shifted significantly left, but heading into 2020 I think the Democrats have to come to terms with the fact that the moderates in the race represent their best chance of toppling Trump compared to the leftists and populists. Why? Because the Democrats have to reconcile that the electoral playing field will be determined with the coalition they have rather than the coalition they may wish they had. On no issue is this more explicit than on health care....
Single-payer health care can only happen with a decisive national mandate, and I suspect such a mandate could only come from a broad coalition of the downscale, FDR-style, who is fed up with private insurance and won't take it anymore. But that coalition of the downscale will not happen in 2020....because the downscale will be divided along racial lines. As I said earlier, Trump has consolidated support among the white working-class and it's very unlikely they'll break with him in a decisive way. If that proves true, then the Democrats' path to 270 electoral votes requires them to significantly outperform the historical average among upscale professionals. There were some indications based on trendlines in 2016 and 2018 that this can be done, but it changes the DNA of the Democratic Party in a way that will block the path to progressive governance, on health care in particular. Upscale professionals are the demographic most likely to like their private health insurance plan, and will thus be the most sensitive to the prospect of disruption. This poses a collision between the interests of a Democratic nominee who will be proposing considerable structural change to the health care status quo with a voting bloc they must have if they're gonna win who wants to see the least structural change to their health care, or the status quo generally. If the Democrats' only credible path to victory requires a corporate-friendly bloc of swing voters, then they have to appreciate that they will have to run on a corporate-friendly policy agenda.
If I'm right about that, what are the chances of Democrats getting back some of those working-class whites who helped to twice elect Obama and seemed amenable to Bernie Sanders' 2016 message? Extremely doubtful, at least so long as Democrats continue to double-down on the messaging that drives working-class whites absolutely nuts. They won't win them back by talking about "decriminalized borders" or immigrants being "the best of us". They won't win them back by talking about health care guarantees for illegal immigrants. They won't win them back by talking about slavery reparations. They won't win them back by talking about white privilege. They won't win them back by talking about toxic masculinity. They won't win them back by talking about taking their AR-15s. They won't win them back by agreeing with the Twitter mob that people need to be "canceled" for the Halloween costume they wore in 1984 that hasn't aged well. And even though this one is less defensible in terms of global interest, they're also not likely to win them back talking about climate change, because combating climate change will require additional sacrifice disproportionately foisted onto a demographic who believes they've sacrificed enough due to automation, foreign competition, and declining wages....and is more interested in political leaders talking about security rather than more sacrifice. And Donald Trump's already got that messaging covered.
The fundamentals I'm looking at based on combination of gut and historical precedent is that almost all of Trump's 2016 voters will support him again. Those who he successfully persuaded to support him last time will likely be sold on his messaging again, even if grudgingly, since Trump is a maestro at identifying his opponents' biggest weakness and disqualifying them based on it. So let's say 98% of his 2016 voters stay with him next year. That won't be enough alone for him to win again given how narrow his 2016 victory was, but I suspect he'll make up the difference by flipping a small percentage of additional working-class white "legacy Democrats" who held on for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but have since either taken a liking to Trump's style or believe the Democrats have left them with their social justice platform.
Beyond that, the biggest wild card in 2020 is the 2016 Gary Johnson voters. They made up a significant 3.8% of the electorate in 2016, and they are a grab bag of moderate Democrats, NeverTrump Republicans, and genuine independents whose loyalties going into next year's election are anybody's guess. There might even be another third-party candidate next year who gets a good chunk of Johnson's voters, a scenario I see as especially viable if Elizabeth Warren gets the Democratic nomination. Absent another third-party candidate who gets most of Johnson's voters, I wager that whichever of the two major-party candidates gets the lion's share of Johnson's support ends up winning. And on election night I suspect this will be visible not in the places where the election pundits tell us to be looking for (the suburbs of Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee, among others), but in the 2,626 American counties spread across the nation that voted for Donald Trump in 2016. If Trump is doing 2% better than in 2016, in the aggregate, in that giant swath of red-tinted Middle American territory, that probably means he's getting most of those Gary Johnson voters...and that probably means he'll be re-elected.
Looking at these sets of options, it's extremely dispiriting to consider the ramifications next year and beyond. Can Democrats stitch together the coalition necessary to oust Trump and avoid a two-generations-long consolidation of right-wing power through the judiciary that will come if he's re-elected? Right now, I'm betting 60-40 odds against. They might be able to do it if they catch a lot of breaks and can navigate the tight-rope walk necessary to bridge their muscularly progressive policy positions with the decidedly non-progressive demographic of voters most likely to decide the election. But let's say they do win in 2020 courtesy of upscale professionals who vote Democrat primarily out of their personal disgust with Trump. They will lose these voters as soon as it's time to govern.
Win or lose, the Democratic coalition of 2020 strikes me as historically closest to the Democratic coalition of 1976, an unsustainable mix and match of competing interests momentarily united in a referendum against Richard Nixon. Jimmy Carter was able to eke out the narrowest Electoral College victory that year by dragging Deep South segregationists onto the Democratic Party dance floor one last time, but that coalition didn’t fare so hot for the Dems for the next 16 years. Yet right now, the prospect of a win in 2020--that prevents conservative Trump-appointed judges from dismantling every progressive achievement going back to Teddy Roosevelt--before a comprehensive Democratic coalition collapse seems like the best-case scenario for them.
posted by Mark at 6:31 PM
2 Comments:
Sobering stuff that "the orange one" could get reelected after all that's gone on. Hopefully there's a decently-sized number of people in the moderate, "we voted for him the first time since he was famous and something new but we won't do it again" camp.
I'm also on team Mayor Pete -- smart, articulate, and seems like a good guy.
As I said in the writeup I don't think too many 2016 Trump voters are gonna flip. If they were won by his messaging then, I think he'll get them again. His biggest political skin is disqualifying "the other guy". The best thing the Democratic nominee will have going for them is that a small chunk of Trump's base in 2016 has since exited the electorate (by dying) while those who've entered the electorate since 2016 (college-aged kids) will be overwhelmingly anti-Trump. If Dems can also hold as many upscale suburban voters who went for Democratic Congressional candidates last year and also pick up a plurality of Gary Johnson's 2016 voters, that's their most realistic path to victory. It's doable but given the candidates' various vulnerabilities, it'll be a lot harder than most polls and mainstream media conventional wisdom suggests.
We got a sobering reminder of that this morning, when the highest-rated pollster in the business (Siena...the only poll with an A+ rating from the polling aggregators) showed every single swing state was a dead heat (within the margin of error) between Biden and Trump....and Trump beating Warren in most of them. This is also a wake-up call of how much the coastal blue states skew the national averages in the same way that allowed Hillary to win the popular vote in 2016 even though Trump got 57% of the electoral votes. So even if the national polls are right in showing Trump is 7-8 points underwater, what matters is how well he's doing in the 11 swing states, and right now the Siena polls shows he's extremely competitive in them. And even if the election was held today, when supposedly 49% of the country wants to see him impeached, the election would be a photo finish because of the Electoral College.
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